A Walk in the Clouds

Today was a great day - Not only did I get to fly almost 3 hours for free, I went to a concert with my dad and ran into a ton of friends there too!

I'll save the gory details of the flight for the end here, but basically we went to Muncie, IN to retrieve a charter plane that had been left there after an engine failure. I watched my flight instructor fly on the way down, then I flew on the way back. It went really well, and I feel really good about it. :-)

Afterwards, I went downtown and met my dad at Morphy Hall for a concert by Sotto Voce, a world-class tuba/euphonium quartet that was started at UW-Madison several years ago. I saw them with my dad earlier this year (January?) and thoroughly enjoyed both concerts. One of the pieces they played today struck me as the perfect title for this entry - Wilkenschatten, which supposedly translates to "A Walk in the Clouds." (I was flying in clouds earlier.)

The best part was that I ran into a bunch of friends. Tina, who I went to high school with. Toby, who I marched with '91-'93. Adam, who I marched with in '96. The best, though, was some of my cohorts from the UWM Tuba/Euph ensemble... Chewy (who also marched Madison), Russ, and Jon (another Madison alum). I was really happy to see them all!

Okay, now on to the gory details of my flight:

(I believe the word I've used in the subject means "A walk in the clouds"... It's a piece of music that was played at a concert I saw tonight after flying all day, and I thought it appropriate.)

Today I learned a LOT. The mission: Retrieve Chieftain 3591U from MIE. The taxi down was none other than Dakota 8183X, which I've been working on my hi-performance endorsement in the last couple of days.

My day consisted of two flights: One in the back seat watching two experienced pilots (my CFII, Joe, and the charter pilot, Gary) fly IFR (actual IMC for part of it) and a flight back to Madison in the left seat IFR with a good solid hour of actual.

Some impressions of the flight down: Joe can cruise through checklists a lot faster than I can, and he flies with precision. It certainly gave me a standard to aspire to. However, I still have the best eyes: I was the first of the three of us to spot traffic on three different traffic calls.

Joe tried valiantly for the short way around Chicago (V177) but this was our conversation with Clearance for the way down:

"Madison Clearance, Dakota 8183X IFR to MIE" "Dakota 8183X, cleared as file... Uhhh, I don't think that route's gonna work. Taxi to 21 via Juliet and Bravo, we'll have your new routing in a few minutes."

As I expected, our new routing included KELSI, the magic intersection for staying out of the way of Chicago approach.

Anyway... Enough about that. I want to talk about the part where *I* flew! (duh ;-)

After lunch at Vince's Joe and I waited for Gary to get the Chieftain running and then fired up the Dakota. I got out my new Viban view-limiting device. I'm kind of disappointed in it, but with some paper taped to the left-hand side and a sectional in the window, it worked pretty well. It definitely beats the heck out of Foggles, but I think I'm gonna send it back for a Francis hood.

Our filed route for the return trip was Muncie direct Boiler V399 Peotone direct KELSI direct Rockford direct Madison, and we were cleared as filed. I took off and stayed perfectly on the centerline (gotta add all them horses SLOWLY). After takeoff it was on with the hood and over to Indy Center (Todd, were you working today?)

Things went pretty well in the beginning. I'm to the point now where Joe mostly is giving me hints to make things easier rather than "you did this wrong" type of stuff. It feels good!

With the longer cross country there was more time available to fly, to think, to get ahead of the plane. I was doing all the right things. However, all of the flight planning was soon out the window, before we even reached Boiler: "Dakota 8183X, turn left heading 305, vectors to clear Chicago airspace..." And we were on vectors almost until RFD!

Well, we can't just let things be easy right? So my attitude indicator suddenly disappeared behind a cover. OK, no problem, I've done this before. Heck, I feel perfectly comfortable with no AI.

A little TOO comfortable, perhaps. 30 seconds later, the DG failed too. That's all right - Still standard partial panel. Keep the wings level, check 305 on the compass every once in a while, you know the drill.

Then, the compass failed too. No direct heading reference... OK, this is getting tougher now! Extra concentration on holding wings level, and when I notice a departure from that, try to do the opposite for the same length of time. After doing that for a while and working it out OK, the compass came back to life. But you know what that means...

Bam bam bam, things start failing left and right and center too! For the next hour plus, there were never fewer than three instruments covered up, and as many as five!

Altimeter failed, watch the VSI, do the same "averaging" technique as when the compass and DG were both failed. And look, your pitot iced up, there goes the ASI. Pitot heat on, ASI back, Whoops, now your VSI failed too, airspeed is the last pitch reference. And just in case you weren't having enough fun, there goes the turn coordinator!

So at this point I'm trying to maintain 6000 feet and 305 degrees (and keep the airplane right side up) with nothing but the airspeed indicator and the magnetic compass. Yow! Joe did keep peeking at the altimeter just to double-check, but I didn't get the luxury.

Well, all these "failures" had the desired effect. After about 10 minutes of being almost instrument-less, I'd managed to hold my altitude within 60 feet just guesstimating corrections, and hold my heading within 10 degrees. And most importantly, keep the greasy side down and maintain situational awareness (station keeping with VOR's and an NDB despite being on vectors). Then, all at once, Joe pulled all of the instrument covers off and said "OK, you've got all your instruments back. It should feel like a CAVU VFR day now!" And it did, almost.

What changed VERY noticeably was my scan. The cross- checking was almost effortless. I was seeing things I've never seen before. For the first time ever, I noticed a subtle pitch change while I was looking at the airspeed indicator. In 40 minutes or so, my IFR flying went from marginally passable to rock solid.

With the "hacked" Viban setup we also passed into actual conditions at some point without me being able to see it. There was still occasional ground contact I guess, because Joe wouldn't let me take the contraption off.

Finally, somewhere west of Joliet we were given direct Rockford. What with all the vectors and partial (REALLY partial) panel operation, I was a little bit weak on including the navs in the scan, but still better than I've been until the last couple of flights, so overall, OK.

After crossing RFD and getting cleared direct back to Madison, I started the approach checklist:

Position: Just north of RFD
ATIS: Information Golf, 600 broken, 2400 overcast, 2 miles in mist. Sweet!
Instruments: DG and Altimeter set.
Nav radios: Nav2 left on the Madison VOR to continue enroute navigation, Nav1 tuned to localizer, ID'ed (kinda weak), twisted to inbound course, markers set. DME tuned to Madison VOR and ID'ed. ADF tuned to Monah for the miss.
Com radios: Now on Madison approach, number 2 to tower.
Approach briefing: 2700 to WINSR, 182 degrees inbound, 1300-1/2 for localizer, punch 3:36 into the timer, 1060 -1/2 for full ILS, missed climb straight ahead direct MONAH and hold.
Landing checklist: Gas on fullest tank, pump on, Undercarriage down and bolted, Mixture and Prop deferred, Switches on as needed, Seat belts secured.
Listen... And we're once again on vectors.

This is the most prepared I've felt for an approach in a long time. I wasn't spacing on anything, got everything done plenty early and double-checked things too, and even anticipated what ATC was gonna do with me.

We were vectored a fair ways north of the field. Joe finally let me yank the Viban off and use the murk outside as my view limiting device. They vectored us through the localizer and then back on it to let a couple jets pass us, then we were cleared for the approach.

The approach wasn't the prettiest thing in the world - I was practically back on the localizer before my turn inbound, went through, didn't pick a high enough intercept angle, etc... But, in some ways it was an improvement. I called out "Glideslope alive" rather than "Oh crap I'm already above it". I noticed trends in the needles rather than just positions. My only real problem was that I was overcorrecting. However, once I'd gotten firmly established I kept both needles within a dot and a half at the worst.

I first spotted the rabbit at 1300 MSL (440 AGL) and stayed on the glideslope needle as we busted one last cloud and I saw the runway lights at about 300 AGL. This was my third approach in fairly low actual (ie within 20 seconds or so of being a miss). There is nothing quite as satisfying as getting your tail kicked trying to keep that bird flying right through the clouds and then after all your hard work on the approach seeing the runway slowly, magically appear out of the murk right where it's supposed to be. It's a really cool sight.

As we were taxiing back in, Joe said "That's some of the best IFR flying I've seen from you." I concur - Today *was* the best IFR flying I've done. I'm finally starting to feel competent! Yee haw! :-D

Oh, and today's flight put me over the XC PIC requirements for the IR, I got my Wings Phase I signoff, and I only have an hour of performance landings to go to earn my high performance endorsement. Woohoo!